Percy Take the Wheel is a Harry Potter fanfic by Kitty Smith first published in 2018. It follows the Weasley family after an accident with the Ford Anglia kills Molly and incapacitates Arthur the summer before the canon events of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. With no family members able to take in all five underaged Weasleys and Bill and Charlie forced to work to support the family, Percy has to step up and run the household.
It can be read on fanfiction.net here
and on Archive of Our Own here.
This fanfic includes instances of the following tropes:
- Adaptational Early Appearance: The Lovegoods appear as supporting characters approximately two years before their first canonical mention.
- Affectionate Gesture to the Head: One that's given magical properties, as well! As it turns out, it's part of Hedge Magic.
- Big Brother Instinct: Percy, of course. It takes multiple forms during the fic. He even starts transferring it to Harry.
- Bill also displays it, as shown when he freaks out about the ghoul.
- Blatant Lies: Percy tells Fred and George that Harry and Ron have a fungus to make them put on an amulet. He also tells Bill that Luna made it for him.
- Blood Magic: The abovementioned amulets? Yeah, Percy needed his blood to make those. Apparently Hedge Magic has a component of blood magic in general.
- Character Death: Molly Weasley. Most of the fic, especially early on, deals with the fallout from her absence.
- Character Development: Percy. And how. Over the course of the fic he steps in to become a capable parental figure to the younger Weasleys (and even tries with the two older than him) despite being just a few weeks shy of sixteen when he starts the fic.
- Ginny acts a lot more like her later-canon self, becoming more fiery and confident earlier, after Percy mentions her crush on Harry.
- Don't Split Us Up: The main driving force of the fic, as none of the other Weasley relatives can take them all. Downplayed compared to some examples, as it's acknowledged that they'd all still be in one family and able to visit each other, but everyone's so traumatized by the loss of their parents that Percy still thinks being split up is a bad idea.
- Doorstopper: The fic is incomplete, but so far has over **206,000** words. For context, that is longer than every single Harry Potter book except Order of the Phoenix.
- Insistent Terminology: No, that's not blood on the floor. It's stains. Played for drama, as it's part of Percy's thought process as he's wiping up blood left from the accident that killed his mother and seriously wounded his father.
- In Spite of a Nail: Despite all the changes to the Weasley family, Harry still ends up spending much of the summer after his First Year with them. Only the circumstances of how he gets there change.
- For Want Of A Nail: Percy’s tampering with Dobby’s attempts to get to Harry leads to him being nearly stopped at Charing Cross, not Harry and Ron.
- Loophole Abuse: Dobby's not allowed to warn Percy about what's going to happen at Hogwarts that year. Percy then explains to Dobby that he can just show up to retrieve stolen items, even if he can’t tell him directly about the bad things impending Hogwarts. And then steals from Dobby.
- Mama Bear: Molly Weasley, of course. Even in death.
- Momma's Boy: A positive example. Percy was close to Molly. This might have something to do with his inherited predilection for Hedge Magic.
- Promotion to Parent: Percy, natch. The early chapters especially focus on his trying to run the Weasley household.
- Downplayed with Bill and Charlie, who are both of age, but who have to support the family from afar monetarily.
